Augustus (53 page)

But she was very aware of her social position, and let no one forget it.

Very probably Julia’s way of life differed little in kind from that of other fashionable women of her class, although it may have done so in degree. We are told that she took part in drinking parties in the Forum, walked the streets looking for excitement, and committed adultery with various leading Romans, among them Mark Antony’s son by Fulvia, the forty-three-year-old Iullus Antonius. Despite these indiscretions, she and her friends took care for many years that no reports of sexual promiscuity reached her father’s ears.

In 2
B.C.,
however, convincing evidence of her behavior was passed to the
princeps,
although the identity and motives of the informant are unknown. His reaction revealed a total loss of emotional control. He was so shocked and, it would seem, ashamed that he refused for a time to receive visitors. He wrote a letter informing the Senate of the case, but stayed at home and allowed a quaestor to read it out on his behalf. When he heard that a confidante of Julia, a freedwoman called Phoebe, had hanged herself, he cried out: “I should have preferred to be Phoebe’s father!”

Iullus was either executed or forced to kill himself, and the other men in Julia’s circle were banished to various parts of the empire. Nor was there much mercy toward Julia: Augustus sent her into exile; arranged Tiberius’ divorce from her without consulting him; and gave orders that “should anything happen to her” after his death she should not be buried in the Mausoleum. He never forgave her and never saw her again.

The striking feature of these events is not so much Julia’s immodesty, but her father’s overreaction. Augustus’ own private life could not stand scrutiny, but he had no qualms about applying a double standard. His anger leaps from the pages of the ancient sources, and was surely sincere. Julia’s behavior defied the central beliefs of the regime. For a quarter of a century the
princeps
had promoted the old ways and the old days—tradition, sobriety, duty, womanly modesty, marriage. And now his own family, of whose virtues he had boasted, was shown to harbor rot in its core! He had expected his daughter to be a virtuous matron, on the model of Cornelia, but it turned out that she was a moral descendant of the vicious Sempronia, who had conspired with Catilina. Like her, Julia was witty, intelligent, and shameless.

Far exceeding the penalties specified by his own legislation, Augustus used the “solemn names of sacrilege and treason for the common offence of misconduct between the sexes.” The men involved were probably tried in a treason court, although if the official version of what happened is the whole story, Julia’s offense was personal and not really a crime against the state.

However, it is likely that Julia’s disgrace had a political dimension. It would not have been the first time that a Roman woman making a political intervention was smeared with charges of sexual license (that is probably what happened to Sempronia). Interestingly, three of the men with whom Julia was supposed to have committed adultery were members of Rome’s oldest families: Cornelius Scipio, Appius Claudius Pulcher, and Titus Sempronius Gracchus. These were once names to conjure with and evoked some of the most famous pages in the history of the Republic. Another of the men had been consul a few years earlier—Quinctius Crispinus Sulpicianus, to whom Velleius attributes “unique depravity disguised by forbidding eyebrows.”

Tacitus has a telling paragraph about Gracchus:

This shrewd, misguidedly eloquent aristocrat had seduced Julia while she was Marcus Agrippa’s wife. Nor was that the end of the affair, for when she transferred to Tiberius this persistent adulterer made her defiant and unfriendly to her new husband. A letter abusing Tiberius, which Julia wrote to her father Augustus, was believed to have been Gracchus’ work.

Here is evidence, admittedly obscure and partial, of infighting between two factions—one centered on Julia and her sons, and the other on Tiberius and, we may suppose, Livia. It is not known when Julia delivered her letter about Tiberius; perhaps she was defending herself against allegations he may have made against her, or alternatively she could have been taking advantage of his withdrawal to Rhodes. Even if the essence of the matter was a difference of personality, the conflicting dynastic interests of the parties meant that Julia’s intervention must have had political implications.

One of the accusations leveled against Julia sounds innocuous, but it especially infuriated the
princeps
. In the Forum there was a small pool, called the Lacus Curtius, near which stood an enclosure containing a fig tree, an olive tree, and a vine (now replanted for today’s tourists) alongside a statue of Marsyas with a wineskin over his shoulder. Marsyas was a satyr, a companion of the god Dionysus. He was skilled with the flute and challenged the god Apollo, who played the lyre, to a musical competition; he lost and the god punished him by skinning him alive.

The Marsyas story bore two meanings. First, it symbolized the eternal struggle between the Apollonian and Dionysian aspects of human nature. Second, the satyr came to be regarded as an emblem of liberty. That is why his statue in the Forum wore a
pileus
or Phrygian cap, such as slaves were given when they were freed.

Julia placed a wreath on Marsyas’ head, presumably during one of her late-night sessions in the Forum. Decorating a statue in this way without official permission was not allowed, but, on the face of it, hardly qualifies as a serious offense.

Why did Julia honor Marsyas? According to one report, she prostituted herself in the privacy of the enclosure, so the wreath could simply have been discarded party gear. However, it is conceivable that she was making an antigovernment demonstration, calling for a return to Rome’s lost freedoms. Bearing in mind her father’s expropriation of Apollo as his tutelary favorite among the Olympians, and Marsyas’ association with Dionysus, she could also have been signaling her disapproval of the
princeps
—even evoking the memory of the “New Dionysus,” her lover’s father, Mark Antony.

It may be no coincidence that in this year the people are reported to have pressed for some (unspecified) reforms. They sent the tribunes to talk with Augustus, who attended an assembly of the people and discussed their demands in person with them. Perhaps the agitation had something to do with his decision to restrict the number of citizens who could receive free grain (Rome’s only concession to state-funded social welfare); and he distributed a possibly conciliatory grant of 240 sesterces to each citizen.

All this is speculation. However, Pliny, writing about Augustus in the middle of the following century, remarks (in passing, as of a fact which everyone knows) on “his daughter’s adultery and the revelation of her plots against her father’s life.” This implies a common opinion that there was more to Julia’s downfall than sexual promiscuity.

If there was an assassination plot, it is difficult to see what Julia and her supporters were hoping to achieve. We can reasonably assume that she loved her sons; killing Augustus at this time would have damaged rather than advanced their interests. Gaius and Lucius were much too young to succeed the
princeps,
and Tiberius, well liked by the legions, could be counted on to fill the power gap.

There is only one explanation that is psychologically and politically plausible. This is that Julia believed her sons’ position would be weak in the event of her father’s death in the coming five years or so, before they were mature enough to assert their rights and defend themselves. She would have found it useful to attract the support of an experienced male political figure. If she could marry her lover, Iullus Antonius, she would not only be satisfying her appetites, but Gaius and Lucius would have a high-profile protector during an awkward and dangerous interregnum. It is possible that the letter she sent to her father complaining about Tiberius was part of a campaign to engineer a divorce, for which she would need Augustus’ permission. In a word, a conspiracy to control events after the
princeps
was dead has been misinterpreted as a conspiracy to see the
princeps
dead.

This line of thought suggests a fairly benign scheme, with whose aims Augustus would have had some sympathy. He would have been irritated by Julia’s interference in his dynastic business, but surely not furious as we know him to have been. It follows that at least some of the tales about his daughter’s rackety private life must have been true, or at least that he believed them.

Here, then, to summarize, is a best guess at the real story behind Julia’s downfall. She headed a political faction, dedicated to promoting her sons’ interests as eventual successors to Augustus. The boys, encouraged by him, were very popular with the people, and Julia as their mother spoke up for the concerns and grievances of Rome’s citizenry. Her role was that of a loyal opposition within the regime. Her father found this a useful safety device for the release of political pressure, but she risked overstepping the line of acceptable lobbying.

When the scandal broke, a number of factors came together at the same time. With Tiberius’ withdrawal to Rhodes, Julia was pursuing an innocuous plot to get permission to divorce him and marry Iullus Antonius, her purpose being to strengthen her position and her sons’ in the event of the
princeps’
early death; she was associating herself (Marsyas) with growing popular discontent in Rome; and she and her private life discredited her father’s conservative social policies.

Augustus was irritated by the first issue, alarmed by the second, outraged only by the third. He was accustomed to obedience within the family circle, and, assuming Julia’s promiscuity to be public knowledge, he could hardly bear the ridicule and disgrace it would bring on him; it was this that powered his vengeful reaction. Throughout his life, Augustus was a master of self-control, but every now and again we can detect an overflow of deep and powerful feeling. He dearly loved his closest relatives—his wife, Livia; his sister Octavia; his grandsons Gaius and Lucius; and, it would seem, Julia. Perhaps his rage expressed an unspoken, unadmitted bitterness at the truth that he had bought his high place in the world by subduing the claims of affection to the imperatives of power.

No hint has come down to posterity about how Gaius and Lucius reacted to their mother’s disgrace. Brought up in their grandfather’s house, they may not have seen all that much of her. But if they were hurt or upset, they knew better than to cross a paterfamilias who expected everyone around him to fall in with his wishes, loyally and with no questions asked.

When Tiberius, far away on Rhodes, learned what had happened and that Augustus had used his name in the bill of divorce, he was privately delighted, but felt obliged to send a stream of letters urging a reconciliation between father and daughter. The motive for his kindliness was probably to avoid giving needless offense to Gaius and Lucius and their supporters, and to demonstrate to any doubters that his wife’s fall from grace had nothing to do with him. Livia also seems to have acted generously toward Julia: an inscription suggests that she seconded a couple of slaves to her service.

The chosen place of exile was as comfortable as could be expected. It was the palace on the island of Pandateria. Oddly, it is reported that Augustus had one of Julia’s country houses pulled down, because it had been built on too lavish a scale: perhaps the fault lay in the villa being on mainland Italy and visible to all, rather than hidden discreetly away.

Julia was forbidden to drink wine or enjoy any other luxury. Her aging mother, Scribonia, nobly volunteered to come and stay with her, but Julia was forbidden any male company, whether free or slave, except by Augustus’ special permission, and then only after he had been given full particulars of the applicant’s age, height, complexion, and any distinguishing marks on his body. The guards must have been male, but will not have strayed beyond the service block into the villa itself.

The public felt sorry for Julia, and pressure built for her pardon. “Fire will sooner mix with water than that she shall be allowed to return,” said the unforgiving
princeps
. In response, agitators, showing a nice sense of humor, threw lit torches into the river. When a people’s assembly called for her reprieve, he stormed: “If you ever bring up this matter again, may the gods afflict you with similar daughters or wives!”

After five years, Augustus relented to the extent that his daughter was moved to Rhegium, a Greek city on the toe of Italy where he had settled some veterans; they would be able to keep an eye on her. She was not allowed outside the city walls.

XXIII

THE UNHAPPY RETURN

2
B.C.–A.D.
9

He received a letter from his stepson asking leave to return to Italy, now that he was a private citizen, and visit his family whom he greatly missed. Tiberius claimed that the real reason for his departure had been to avoid the suspicion of rivalry with Gaius and Lucius; now that they were grown up and generally acknowledged as Augustus’ political heirs, his reason for staying away from Rome was no longer valid.

The plea was rejected, with a brutality that reveals pain. The
princeps
had not forgiven Tiberius for turning his back on him, and what he saw as his stepson’s duty. He wrote: “You should abandon all hope of visiting your family, whom you were so eager to desert.”

Augustus now faced a tricky problem in the east, where in 2
B.C.
the already complicated situation in Armenia (which Tiberius had been expected to deal with before his resignation) had been complicated by the death, perhaps murder, of the Parthian monarch Frahâta. His son and successor, Frahâtak, took the opportunity to meddle in the buffer kingdom’s affairs. Unless some action was taken, Augustus saw a danger that Armenia would move out of the Roman and into the Parthian sphere of influence.